Dick In Dixie (Hank Williams III)

Supposedly my writing is confusing, because

I

do

not

use

enough

paragraphs.

I'll try to work on that. (Since by now the official tally of complaints stands at two, making it quite an impressive percentage of my readership)

I've found this site that seemed to suit me rather well for this blog and I will continue posting music with it. The downloads will only be available for seven days after I posted the link (or until 1000 people (I think that is the correct number) downloaded the file, whichever comes first, I'll leave it up to your imagination what is more likely).

Older songs/titles I hadn't posted:

Fats Domino: The Fat Man

Junior Delgado: Hypocrites

and the one for today:

Hank Williams III: Dick In Dixie

I know that title isn't really, well, sophisticated, but I love the song. Plus Hank (who is - surprise, surprise - the grand-son of Hank Williams and son of Hank Williams Jr, making him country royalty) just released his third album, so I figured I'd make y'all aware of that fact and him.

Apparentely Michael Jackson has released a song on Katrina (not that I would know about this since I positively pride myself on my lack of knowledge regarding pop culture and I am sure I will elaborate on that at some point). Anyway, liked Aaron McGruder's take on it

On the political front, check out the complete mess that is the German non-involvement in the Iraq war. Seems like the US-government is deliberately leaking this stuff so as to embarrass the German government (the ex-goverment that is) and - potentially - point out to the new government that they should play by the rules (the diplomatic ones that is, which Schröder screwed over in 2002 in order to win reelection), as most if not all of this stuff originates from NY Times ties to the Bush-administration. Kind of curious where this will lead, especially with the current German secretary of state (Frank-Walter Steinmeier) having been directly responsible for the secret service (BND) in the past administration.

Also interesting are the interview transcripts of Guantanamo inmates, that apparently have been made public. If anyone knows whether I can read some of the actual transcripts online please tell me so, here is what the NY Times writes about them.

On a personal note, I have been accepted for my university's exchange program to Paris in the fall. I am still going to apply to two other schools (Brussels and Straßburg) but it feels good to have this in the bank. Oh yeah and I have been invited to the first wedding of a friend of mine, guess we're getting old. I'm really happy for the two of them though and am looking forward to attending it.

Finally, some bball crap. Look at what Vince could do in High School and supposedly the Knicks have swung quite some trade with the Raptors.

Oh, my bad, I had forgotten about this, I copied this excerpt from a Bill Simmons email exchange with Malcolm Gladwell, whom I didn't know before but who definitly interests me now, he came up with some really decent stuff in there.

"Gladwell: This is actually a question I'm obsessed with: Why don't
people work hard when it's in their best interest to do so? Why does
Eddy Curry come to camp every year overweight?

The (short) answer is that it's really risky to work hard, because then
if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't
work hard. It's a form of self-protection. I swear that's why Mickelson
has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say:
Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I'll
win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard
as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he
still lost. That has to be devastating, and dealing with that kind of
conclusion takes a very special and rare kind of resilience. Most of the
psychological research on this is focused on why some kids don't study
for tests -- which is a much more serious version of the same problem.
If you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying and you
fail, then the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study and you
fail, the problem is that you're stupid -- and stupid, for a student, is
a death sentence. The point is that it is far more psychologically
dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare.
People think that Tiger is tougher than Mickelson because he works
harder. Wrong: Tiger is tougher than Mickelson and because of that he
works harder."

Am not gonna really add anything to that, seemed like a pretty good description of something I personally am very familiar with, even though I am not sure I completely share the failure-fear aspect or maybe I just don't want to share it because of the conclusions it would leave me with in regard to my own behaviour. Anyway, hope this kind of makes sense. And, ja, sorry about the extremely long post for today, if you've managed to read until here, thanks for doing so.